


Shaking the Mountain

by fitz_mack



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, One-Sided Relationship, POV Skye | Daisy Johnson, Skye | Daisy Johnson's Superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 11:50:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5247221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fitz_mack/pseuds/fitz_mack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>POV Skye - How Simmons's absence impacted everyone on the team.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shaking the Mountain

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all,
> 
> This was inspired by the scene in 03x02 "Purpose in the Machine" where Daisy could hear a sound that nobody else could. This made me think, what if she could hear/feel a lot more than we realize because of her power. So this is part an exploration of that, part character study, and of course an unrequited Mack in love with Fitz fic (because I'm a sucker for that).
> 
> This is also my very very first fan fiction. Let me know what you all think!

She doesn’t know if anyone realizes how deep she has gone inside herself in order to calm the roar of power beneath her skin, a power that makes her feel like a tuning fork plunged into an electric socket. She doesn’t know if they realize that when she is at her quietest and calmest, she can feel the hum of the earth under her toes and taste volcanos on her tongue thousands of miles away.

She never tells anyone how much the world around her resonates and that even individual actions are like stones thrown into a pond that only she can see. Because of this, Daisy (though, in the comfort of her own head, the name Skye still throbs like a heartbeat) can see the weight of Jemma’s absence like a black-hole at the center of SHIELD.

***

Every first Sunday of the month, around 3pm, Daisy would feel a staccato rhythm against the back of her neck, a low buzzing that is easily ignorable. If she went looking she would find Agent May in a remote range in an out of the way sector of the base. Here the fierce woman would have an assortment of large weapons to systematically destroy moving targets. Nobody knew that this time was the same time that Simmons and May would meet monthly for a quiet coffee, to exchange almost no words with silence punctuated only by the light sound of a turning page of a novel.

Sometimes, Daisy will feel her heart skip a beat and a slight tremor through her fingers if they happen to be pressed against a wall. She knows Hunter has been swiping prototype small explosives from the development labs, just to “help them out a bit, love.” Even though no-one would ever ask Hunter to help with explosives. She has not yet figured out what prompts Hunter to set them off where and when he does, but she has seen the way his eyes flash in sympathy for Fitz when he thinks nobody is looking. Daisy can see the desperation in both of their eyes shaped like a woman and tinted with loss.

In the earliest parts of the morning, when she is Skye and not yet aware nor caffeinated enough to remember to be Daisy, there is a drum beat that taps between her shoulder blades like a pendulum. If she is awake long enough to see the sun rise and head to breakfast, she will see Mack walking to the gym with a large, black axe that he keeps designing and redesigning. No one ever bothers him when he walks through the halls with it. Everyone has seen the bags grow under his eyes from the stress of challenging Coulson day-in and day-out. Though, nobody but her has yet realized how many new hires in the tech department are now unofficially reporting to him because they can never find the elusive Fitz.

In the evenings, just before dinner, she can feel Bobbi’s batons whipping through the air, like someone rapidly breathing in and out of a dog whistle. It keeps Daisy far away from the gym closest to the science wing, because it gives her a migraine on a bad day. She knows the batons come out when the lab coat gets put away, part physical therapy and part emotional therapy. Though the stark white lab coat is loose on the blond woman, they all know the woman is a warrior who suffocates under its weight and is only pretending to acclimate. Although Bobbi no longer flinches when hears the name Simmons in the lab, the crack of her batons against fighting dummies has not missed a day yet. 

Daisy never hears or feels anything from A.C., but she saw the way his shoulders stayed loose and relaxed when they had to hire and recruit for the bio-chem division. That, more than anything, tells her everything she needs to know about how much weight is riding on his shoulders.

They all have had months of practice choking back sighs of disappointment by expecting and failing to see kind brown eyes and light brown hair when they turn a corner. They have all taken steps to live with the throb of loss.

Everyone but Fitz.

***

Sometimes, she feels a shiver down her spine like a static roar. She can taste the tang of a name threaded through the sound, colored by a Scottish brogue. Usually this happens when she is in the gym late at night, pounding punching bags with cores of steel (trying to see if she can focus and maintain the quakes in her body on just the surface of her fists).

A small part of Daisy has been waiting for the day that the prickle of the scream on her spine is quieted with a softly beseeching, “Turbo.” After months, she is still waiting for that to happen.

***

When Daisy goes days without using her power, the effort of keeping the earthquake beneath her skin leaves her nerves frayed and sensitive. On those days, she seeks out Mack since he is the only steady mountain in an agency full of hurricanes and firestorms. When her nerves are raw from the jagged hum of her power, his quiet presence is a balm.

Because of this, she notices every time his large fists clench when the Scottish engineer misses another meeting. Nor does she miss how he goes still, not stiff but quiet, when he is there. She doesn’t know which reaction is from relief and which is from distress.

She bets that it takes every ounce of self-control to keep himself from falling apart. She wonders, idly, if heartbreak and missed opportunities vibrate on a frequency she can sense. She is sure, that if she could, that she would be torn apart at the seams if she touched him on those days.

Daisy has moved mountains and leveled forests. But, for all her power, she is not sure she can keep the mountain of a man from being shaken apart.


End file.
